On Priestesses in Peril, Seeker Suckage and Fried Familiars

we are epic bar fight starters

After boozin’ around Karameikos for a while, the party starts to thirst for adventure once more! Handily, Adari is headed off back to shadowelf-topia and invites us to join him on the journey through Darokin (aka Derek-land) to get there. Road trip! The party takes a boat north some ways and a passing boat of elves (or eladrin? not sure) throws refuse at us. Aurelia blasts a hole in their ship for the lulz.

Eventually we arrive at Selenica in Darokin, where we’re going to stay for a few days so Adari can take care of some business. Like maybe buying us a better present? We head to the Last Stop Inn to get some rooms, but when we get there, we find some hourglass dudes hanging out in the corner. Zlata and Aurelia try their hand at some bluff and diplomacy checks, and we learn that they are definitely from Darokin and they seem to think that they are acting in an official capacity for the Glantrian government. Well someone’s lying,
obviously, because that is just crazy-pants. Nothing else is learned and we can’t seem to get any names from them. Time to employ violence! The party sends them copious amount of alcohol from an anonymous source. Luckily, Derek rolls a 20 on his hot-women-in-the-bar check,
so the hourglass dudes readily accept the libations. Finally, one of them gets drunk enough to hit on one of the critically hot women, and she slaps him. With a little help from the party, the slap instigates a bar fight, and we manage to get one of the hourglass dudes
out into a quiet alley for a little torture and intimidation, leaving Flor behind to watch the rest of the HDs. The captured HD seriously seems to know nothing, though. The party argues for a while about whether or not to kill him, and though the killing votes have the majority (thanks to some manipulation of Zlata’s hate for Tiamat. Sorry Heather, I promise not to do it too often!), but Elly
is threatening to start something if we try.

Before we can do anything either way, though the HD captain, Petera, and friends (plus some town guards) arrive. They accuse us of kidnapping their buddy (true) and we accuse them of being spies (not exactly true). It also turns out our names are on some sort of list they have, though they won’t tell us what that’s all about. Anyway, we’re all on our way to see the magistrate when we realize that we really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the espionage charges and, unfortunately, we can’t really charge them with being dirty rotten liars in a criminal court. We drop the charges and so do they, but we’ll get them yet! We advise the town guard to keep an eye on them.

A subsequent streetwise check reveals that the HDs have a regional office in town, which we are going to check out when some lady approaches Flor. Turns out she worships the same immortal, Corias, and wants his help finding some friend of hers who has gone missing. The woman, Haelin, tells us that her friend Lavinia disappeared from her shrine and has been replaced with some creepy dude, Grovald. Grovald claims Lavinia has gone off on a spiritual quest and everyone brushes Haelin off when she tries to inquire further into the matter. We go to check out the shrine, which is pretty poor and tiny. Grovald gives us the same line about a spiritual quest, but one of the shrine patrons tells us to try coming back at night when the shrine is less busy.

In the meantime, we head to check out the HD building. It is pretty well guarded, so no good sneaking in option. However, Aurelia’s familiar, Mr Bojangles the book imp, can totally turn invisible! We send him to look in the windows, but he doesn’t see much. Time for Mr Bojangles to undertake an infiltration mission! He makes his way through the building invisibly and find the captain’s room. That list from earlier is there and our names are on it in reference to being spotted with a shadow elf. It seems they are trying to track shadow elf activity in addition to leaving random wanted posters up for Adari in the woods of Karameikos. Hey, why _are _they looking for him in particular? Seems we should find out about that. [[Mr. Bojangles]] also finds our their group is called “the seekers” before he is discovered and fried by a bolt of lightning (I’m pretty sure that was Petera). Guard activity suddenly increases outside and we quickly bail. Don’t worry Bojangles, you’ll reappear after an extended rest!

Now that our investigation of the HD headquarters (I don’t care if we know their name now, they are still hourglass dudes to me) is over (for now), we head back to the shrine to talk to Grovald. When we get there, he totally attacks! Bad move dude, we’re the slayers of gnollterba, your ass is about to get kicked.

Asses are kicked, as was predicted. Grovald surrenders and we liberate 3000gp from his person. We interrogate him and learn that some shady characters told him to keep an eye on the shrine, and though they didn’t specifically tell him to off Haelin and hide her body, he figured it was a good plan. The party hands Grovald over to the authorities and lets Lavinia know her buddy ended up buried behind the shrine fountain. We then go back to the shrine and search around some more for the note Lavinia mentioned seeing earlier. When we find it, it has been mostly burned up, but the words “Tear of Corias” are still readable. Lavinia tells us the Tear is some artifact.

Not having too many leads to go on at this point, we decide to check out the weird behavior of the church leaders Lavinia was talking about. First we head to a sketchy shrine to Talatha, the immortal of being a selfish douchebag, from what I can gather. We bluff our way into the temple, but apart from some creepy chick listening to a drum through which Talatha “speaks,” nothing out of the ordinary is found. Well, unless you count the fact that Chris rolls a 20 on having Flor insinuate the drum-chick is hot, which leads to much confusion for poor enamored Talia. The party then splits up, with Flor and Zlata going to check out temples to Ixion and Asterius and Aurelia, Elly and Talia hanging out at the shrine to Corias in case the bad guys drop by (they don’t). Flor and Zlata notice the temple leaders at both places are avoiding talking to them. Later, when the party has reunited to check out the temples after dark, a shady looking priest is seen leaving the temple of Asterius. The party trails him to a warehouse and eventually follows him inside, where we are attacked by a bunch of priest/cultist dudes with lame-ass teleport attacks. One cultist was kept alive for questioning, and we find out that all this is being done in the name of some shady immortal, Nyx, who is totes into zombies, vampires, and general states of undead-ness. We then kill the prisoner and burn his unattended body.

A search of the warehouse (by the cleric, now that we have no rangers) leads to the discovery of a secret door to a passage below. We follow the passage to a room where there are some zombies and an evil statue animating them. Of course, killing ensues. After the battle, we recover the bodies of several of Selenica’s religious leaders and a town watchman (the one we turned Grovald over to). We intend to turn them over to the temple for resurrection purposes, but Lavinia advises us that it may be best not to show up at a temple with the body of an important priest in tow. The strategy of “leave the body at the door and have Bojangles ring the doorbell invisibly” is employed instead. Alas, this means no monetary reward from the temples for saving the lives bodies of their comrades. We try to talk to the temple leaders and offer our help in eliminating any more Nyx-cult related threats, but are rebuffed.

During one of the resting times in this adventure, Aurelia sends a message home inquiring about the legitimacy of the seeker’s claim to be Glantri sanctioned.

The fate of Dagmar?

Since Brad was not here for much all of this adventure, the rest of the party has begun theorizing about what was going on with his character. Please add more and contribute to the lulz _

We prostituted him out to the shadow elves

We sold to slavers

He got swine flu

He was drunk in the corner of the bar the entire time (most likely, but least entertaining)

Comments

The missing lady is really called Lavinia? or is that our unofficial name for her? Poor Lavinia didn’t do so well in Titus Andronicus (I played her in a small scene one halloween, I was really creepy.)